Those Tyres

As you probably already know, over the weekend, I got my car fitted with two new front tyres by eTyres.  (This is relevant later)

What I didn’t know – and what Blue Witch pointed out in her comment on that post – is that actually, this isn’t the best plan when the car is a front-wheel-drive car. Basically, it means that the tyres with the best grip are on the driving wheels, and you’ve no way of knowing if the rear tyres are losing their grip, particularly in snow, ice, or heavy rain. So on a front-wheel-drive car, the tyres with the best grip should go on the rear tyres – meaning eTyres should’ve swapped things round, replaced the rear tyres with the new ones, and put the used rear tyres on the front wheels. (The eTyres fitter even confirmed that the rear ones will be OK for a good while yet)

Indeed, as BW then pointed out by email, eTyres even carry this advice on their own website.

Yesterday morning I emailed eTyres about this…

I recently ordered two new tyres from eTyres, order ref [xxx] to replace the two front tyres on my front-wheel drive car.

I have since been referred to various manufacturer information that says that on front-wheel drive cars, it is safest/best to have the new tyres on the rear wheels, and in a situation like mine, to move the used-but-safe rear tyres to the front, replacing the rear tyres with new tyres.

Can you explain to me why eTyres

1. Do not inform their customers of this
2. Why their tyre-fitters do not recommend/do this ?

This isn’t a one-off – earlier this year I did the same thing with eTyres on a different vehicle (also front-wheel drive) and had no advice on how this work should be done.

This is also the recommendation of Kleber Tyres and Michelin – see point 6

I’m interested to know why eTyres apparently ignore such advice, and potentially endanger their customers as a result.

As yet, I’ve had absolutely no response from the useless fuckwhistles. If I haven’t heard by the end of today, I’m going to call up and make a pain in the arse of myself that way…